Last year, as a damaged BP well gushed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Greenwich resident Arnold Stancell was tapped by the National Academy of Engineering to help analyze the causes of one of the worst oil spills in U.S. history.

Serving on a committee formed at the request of the U.S. Department of the Interior in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Stancell drew on his 31-year career with Mobil Oil in helping the group investigate the cause of the rig explosion, and come up with recommendations to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

Now, the government is again requesting Stancell's expertise. Recently, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Stancell, 74, to the National Science Board, which oversees the work of the National Science Foundation and the awarding of billions of dollars in grants for science and technology research projects proposed by U.S. universities.

Pending confirmation by the Senate, Stancell said he is looking forward to working with the board to increase American innovation and job opportunities.

"The appointment gives me an opportunity to use my experience and knowledge both in technology and business to help maximize the value to the nation from the National Science Foundation program," Stancell said.

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"I am grateful that these impressive individuals have chosen to dedicate their talents to serving the American people at this important time for our country," Obama said in a statement announcing the appointment of Stancell and others to key administration posts. "I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead."

Stancell's initial experience working with the government was certainly more intensive than his role with the National Science Board is likely to be. He and five other engineers were asked to draft a preliminary report with short-term steps to improve offshore drilling safety by May 28 of last year, when the president had scheduled a press conference to discuss the recommendations.

Incidentally, Obama had asked Stancell and one other committee member to be present at the news conference to field questions from reporters, but Stancell had already scheduled a trip to Europe and couldn't be there.

"It was intense, a number of conference calls," Stancell said of the committee's work. "We pulled together, I think, a good set of recommendations."

Recommendations included having multiple backups for the blowout preventer, which failed during the Deepwater Horizon explosion, and making sure safety was ingrained in the company's culture.

"There was a lot of rushing on the rig as the crew was trying to finish up this well," said Stancell, who went to New Orleans for hearings on the spill. "Certainly from my time in the industry, I knew the importance of a strong safety culture. It's easy to say, but building it into a company takes a lot of work."

After graduating from New York City's prestigious Stuyvesant High School, Stancell, who grew up in Harlem, earned a chemical engineering degree at City College of New York. He began his career in 1958 working for Esso, at one of the company's New Jersey oil refineries.

Stancell only worked at Esso for nine months before leaving to enroll in a chemical engineering doctoral program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he would later return as a visiting professor. He joined Mobil in 1962, working initially in research and development. The company later moved him into more of a business role, and Stancell eventually became the vice president of U.S. exploration and production, and then international exploration and production.

While he's not political, Stancell does pay attention to the government's policies when it comes to issues like renewable energy, a topic he may be asked to examine while on the board. Stancell said he feels it is important to look at the entire process, and how much energy is actually required to produce things, such as ethanol, which the government has subsidized.

When Stancell was with Mobil, he looked into the production of cellophane, made from trees, and said he found, overall, it took 30 percent less energy when using petroleum to create a similar product. The company built plants in Oklahoma and Canada, and Stancell said the petroleum product replaced cellophane in many items.

Stancell is not for clear-cutting rainforests, but he says it's important to recognize that the same trees absorbing carbon dioxide also release the gas when they die.

"I'm not bashful when it comes to standing up on the issues," Stancell says on a recent afternoon at his home in the Milbrook neighborhood of Greenwich, where he's lived with his wife, artist Constance Newton Stancell, since 1980. "Push yourself to look at the whole process."

In 1993, Stancell retired from Mobil with the intention of traveling the world for pleasure with his wife, but his retirement was short-lived. A year later, he was offered a position on the faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Stancell's work in higher education gives him insight into the research done by universities seeking funding from the National Science Foundation. While at MIT, he mentored a student who expanded on Stancell's research into the reaction of plasma when applied to surfaces. Stancell said the student went on to apply this work to the creation of computer chips, with the plasma allowing them to accommodate more and tinier circuits. The student went on to found Lam Research, which provides equipment to companies crafting the chips that run today's ever-smaller computers and cell phones.

"That's what's so exciting about technology," Stancell said. "You open up this whole area and the jobs you create. That's the kind of thing that the National Science Foundation can bring about."

Staff Writer Lisa Chamoff can be reached at lisa.chamoff@scni.com or 203-625-4439.